I'm looking for a perfect cranberry muffin recipe. I have a few books that have basic muffin recipes, but I'm worried -- I want the muffin to be doughy and moist, and heavier in weight, not at all cakey like commercially bought muffins. Any suggestions to how to achieve a consistency like that? I'm guessing that it's the baking powder that makes a muffin cakey but I could likely be wrong.

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Brilliant advice from everybody!

Now I understand why all muffin recipes I find instruct to mix 'just until moistened.'

I actually found a muffin recipe that worked for exactly what I was looking for. It did turn out a little 'rubbery,' but that was kinda what I was looking for Wink

I'm looking for a perfect cranberry muffin recipe. I have a few books that have basic muffin recipes, but I'm worried -- I want the muffin to be doughy and moist, and heavier in weight, not at all cakey like commercially bought muffins. Any suggestions to how to achieve a consistency like that? I'm guessing that it's the baking powder that makes a muffin cakey but I could likely be wrong.

From your description it sounds like you need to look into recipes that aren't muffin recipes.

Alton Brown's recent baking book... I'm Just Here For More Food has a nice break down on muffins that you might like to peruse in a bookstore sometime.

Muffins are usually characterized by their interior showing all different shapes of air bubbles. A muffin that has only small tiny air bubbles is actually just a cake mix- and not a muffin.

It sounds like you want a product with tinier, more squished together air bubbles, and one that is moister as well. Something that might be more like a poundcake or a dense brownie?

I'm thinking that if you want a dense moist heavy product there a couple of options: 1) Take a muffin recipe and break the internal structure by over-mixing the batter. Undermixing the batter is a huge component to making your muffins light and airy. Since you don't want that- do the opposite and mix away. 2) Increase the amount of sugar you use to increase the denseness and moisture of your finished muffin. In fact- use brown sugar instead of white and that will get you started. 3) Play around with decreasing your leavening amounts like you suggested. 4) Maybe look at recipes for baked goods that have the consistency you do want and see what the fat:flour:sugar ratio is while also looking at leavening used. Good recipes to look at would be a poundcake recipe or moist brownies. 5) Take a muffin recipe and change the way you mix it to more mimic cakes for a dense and moist product. Muffins, in addition to their internal bubble shape, are also characterized by the way their ingredients are put together. To make your muffins denser try using butter instead of oil, and cream the butter and sugar together as the first step of the recipe. Then add the eggs and liquid flavorings, and then sifting in the dry ingredients.

Whew- alot of options to try out! If you have the patience, I'd suggest trying out these options one at a time- instead of all together in one recipe.

Alton Brown's recent baking book... I'm Just Here For More Food has a nice break down on muffins that you might like to peruse in a bookstore sometime.

I actually have Alton's book, as well as a great reference/recipes book from Cooks Illustrated. If you want, I can write down the jist of what they say *I haven't really read through Alton's book yet, and I just bought the Cooks Illustrated book last night*. I have yet to make muffins from scratch, I'm in the middle of a move and all my muffin pans are in another apartment... my husband is also currently deployed and I don't trust myself with dozens of muffins by myself at home.

Over-mixing muffins can make them denser, but also hard or rubbery, and unappealing. I wouldn't recommend it.

The oatmeal is a good idea; better yet, pulverize the oatmeal in a blender and sub that for flour. Or, use whole wheat flour/white flour blend, half and half or more whole wheat. Yes, the taste will change a bit. You can sub some ground nuts for some of the flour as well.